Experimental Drawing

Portrait: Roy – 28/01/16

28/01/16

Portrait: Roy – 28/01/16 – One Session

A fellow class-mate came across Roy at a venue where he was reciting monologues in Dickensian costume. Thinking he would make an ideal sitter, he approached Roy and asked if he would mind sitting for the class and here he is…

We were allowed to decide for ourselves how much of Roy we would paint e.g. head and shoulders, three quarters or full length. It seemed a shame not to make use of the costume Roy was wearing so I made a quick sketch to help me decide on the composition. Drawing freely on my paper, I then decided where to crop the edges, this informed my painting.

I had a prepared ground in acrylic paint with some fairly bright colour. I was pre-determined not to make this painting look muddy and dull. As per my sketch I decided on just over half the figure. In my drawing I had included Roy’s white gloved hands. However, during posing he had relaxed his arms down further, and, combined with a slightly shorter height to width ratio on my canvas board, there was not room enough to include them. As Roy’s jacket and hat were a very dark grey, not quite black, I decided to use Blue/Black pigment to keep the dark clean (still being paranoid about avoiding mud). This actually worked quite well and allowed me to add a little red and white to lighten the grey on the folds. Although I used a little green in the flesh of the face, I think I could have used some other colours in the shadow too. Trying hard to avoid making mud resulted in making the flesh a little too warm on the dark side. Something else to consider next time. There is a resemblance to Roy and the sculpting of the folds in the face were starting to work. Overall, a few pluses and a few points for improvement, on the whole it was a very enjoyable session.